The DASH is a punctuation mark that is similar in appearance to a
hyphen or minus sign , but differs from both of these symbols in both
length and function. The most common versions of the dash are the en
dash (–) and the longer em dash (—), whose names historically were
loosely related with the width of a lower-case n and upper-case M,
respectively, in commonly used typefaces .

Usage varies both within English and in other languages, but the
usual convention in printed English text is as follows:

* An em dash (or an en dash) denotes a break in a sentence or to set
off parenthetical statements.

Glitter, felt, yarn, and buttons—his kitchen looked as if a clown
had exploded.
A flock of sparrows—some of them juveniles—alighted and sang.
* The en dash (but not the em dash) indicates spans or
differentiation, where it may be considered to replace "and" or "to"
(but not "to" in the phrase "from … to …"):

The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was fought in western
Pennsylvania and along the present US–Canada border (Edwards, pp.
81–101).
* The em dash (but not the en dash) is also used to set off the
sources of quotes:

Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work,
pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce
without morality, science without humanity, and worship without
sacrifice. —Mahatma Gandhi

Less common are the two-em dash (⸺) and three-em dash (⸻), both
added to
UnicodeUnicode with version 6.1 as U+2E3A and U+2E3B.

FIGURE DASH

The FIGURE DASH (‒) is so named because it is the same width as a
digit, at least in fonts with digits of equal width. This is true of
most fonts, not only monospaced fonts.

The figure dash is used within numbers (e.g. phone number
555‒0199), especially in columns for maintaining alignment. Its
meaning is the same as a hyphen , as represented by the hyphen-minus
glyph; by contrast, the en dash is more appropriately used to indicate
a range of values; the minus sign also has a separate glyph .

The figure dash is often unavailable; in this case, one may use a
hyphen-minus instead. In
UnicodeUnicode , the figure dash is U+ 2012 (decimal
8210).
HTMLHTML authors must use the numeric forms or to type it unless
the file is in Unicode; there is no equivalent character entity.

In
TeX , the standard fonts have no figure dash; however, the digits
normally all have the same width as the en dash, so an en dash can be
substituted when using standard
TeX fonts. In XeLa
TeX , one could use
char"2012 (
Linux LibertineLinux Libertine font has the figure dash glyph).

EN DASH

It has been suggested that this section be SPLIT into a new
article titled
En dash . (Discuss ) (October 2017)

The EN DASH, N DASH, N-RULE, or "NUT" (–) is traditionally half the
width of an em dash . In modern fonts, the length of the en dash is
not standardized, and the en dash is often more than half the width of
the em dash. The widths of en and em dashes have also been specified
as being equal to those of the upper-case letters N and M
respectively, and at other times to the widths of the lower-case
letters.

USAGE

The two main uses of the en dash are to connect symmetric items, such
as the two ends of a range or two competitors or alternatives, and as
a substitute for a hyphen in a compound when one of the connected
items is more complex than a single word.

Ranges Of Values

The en dash is commonly used to indicate a closed range of values—a
range with clearly defined and finite upper and lower
boundaries—roughly signifying what might otherwise be communicated
by the word "through". This may include ranges such as those between
dates, times, or numbers. Various style guides restrict this range
indication style to only parenthetical or tabular matter, requiring
"to" or "through" in running text. Preference for hyphen vs. en dash
in ranges varies. For example,
APA style uses an en dash in ranges,
but AMA style uses a hyphen:

President Jimmy Carter (1977–81)
President Jimmy Carter (1977-81)
President Jimmy Carter, in office from 1977 to 1981

Various style guides (including the Guide for the Use of the
International System of Units (SI ) and the
AMA Manual of StyleAMA Manual of Style )
recommend that when a number range might be misconstrued as
subtraction, the word "TO" should be used instead of an en dash. For
example, "a voltage of 50 V to 100 V" is preferable to using "a
voltage of 50–100 V". Relatedly, in ranges that include negative
numbers, "to" is used to avoid ambiguity or awkwardness (for example,
"temperatures ranged from −18 °C to −34 °C"). It is also
considered poor style (best avoided) to use the en dash in place of
the words to or and in phrases that follow the forms from X to Y and
between X and Y.

Relationships And Connections

The en dash can also be used to contrast values, or illustrate a
relationship between two things. Examples of this usage include:

* Australia beat American Samoa 31–0 .
* Radical–Unionist coalition
* Boston–Hartford route
* New York–London flight (however, it may be seen that New York to
London flight is more appropriate because New York is a single name
composed of two valid words; with a dash the phrase is ambiguous and
could mean either Flight from New York to London or New flight from
York to London, though New York to London flight could actually also
mean New flight from York to London)
* Mother–daughter relationship
* The Supreme Court voted 5–4 to uphold the decision.
* The McCain–Feingold bill

Among writers who use en dashes in these contexts, a distinction is
often made between "simple" attributive compounds (written with a
hyphen) and other subtypes (written with an en dash); at least one
authority considers name pairs, where the paired elements carry equal
weight, as in the
Taft–Hartley Act to be "simple", while others
consider an en dash appropriate in instances such as this to
represent the parallel relationship, as in the McCain–Feingold bill
or
Bose–Einstein statisticsBose–Einstein statistics . However, there is a difference between
something named for a parallel/coordinate relationship between two
people (for example, Bose and
EinsteinEinstein ) and something named for a
single person who had a compound surname , which may be written with a
hyphen or a space but not an en dash (for example, the Lennard-Jones
potential is named after one person (Mr.
John Lennard-Jones ), as are
Bence Jones proteins and Hughlings Jackson syndrome ). Copyeditors use
dictionaries (general, medical, biographical, and geographical) to
confirm the eponymity (and thus the styling) for specific terms, given
that no one can know them all offhand.

The preference for an en dash instead of a hyphen in these
coordinate/relationship/connection types of terms is a matter of style
preference, not inherent orthographic "correctness"; both are equally
"correct", and each is the preferred style in some style guides. For
example, the American Heritage
DictionaryDictionary of the English Language ,
the
AMA Manual of StyleAMA Manual of Style , and Dorland\'s medical reference works use
hyphens, not en dashes, in coordinate terms (such as blood–brain
barrier ), in eponyms (such as
Cheyne–Stokes respiration ,
Kaplan–Meier method ), and so on.

Attributive Compounds

In English, the en dash is usually used instead of a hyphen in
compound (phrasal) attributives in which one or both elements is
itself a compound, especially when the compound element is an open
compound, meaning it is not itself hyphenated. This manner of usage
may include such examples as:

* The hospital–nursing home connection (the connection between the
hospital and the nursing home, not a home connection between the
hospital and nursing)
* A nursing home–home care policy (a policy about the nursing home
and home care)
* Pre–Civil War era
* Pulitzer Prize –winning novel
* The non–San Francisco part of the world

* The post–World War II era

* (Compare post-war era, which, if not fully compounded (postwar),
takes a hyphen, not an en dash. The difference is that war is not an
open compound whereas World War II is.)

The disambiguating value of the en dash in these patterns was
illustrated by Strunk and White in
The Elements of StyleThe Elements of Style with the
following example: when Chattanooga News and Chattanooga Free Press
merged, the joint company was inaptly named "Chattanooga News-Free
Press" (using a hyphen), which could be interpreted as meaning that
their newspapers were news-free.

An exception to the use of en dashes is usually made when prefixing
an already-hyphenated compound; an en dash is generally avoided as a
distraction in this case. Examples of this include:

An en dash can be retained to avoid ambiguity, but whether any
ambiguity is plausible is a judgment call. AMA style retains the en
dashes in the following examples, but one could argue that some
perverseness may be needed to construe the hyphens-only alternative as
ambiguous:

As discussed above, the en dash is sometimes recommended instead of a
hyphen in compound adjectives where neither part of the adjective
modifies the other—that is, when each modifies the noun, as in
love–hate relationship .

* First, use it to indicate ranges of time, money, or other amounts,
or in certain other cases where it replaces the word to.
* Second, use it in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when
one of the elements of the adjective is an open compound, or when two
or more of its elements are compounds, open or hyphenated.

That is, the CMOS favors hyphens in instances where some other guides
suggest en dashes, the 16th edition explaining that "Chicago's sense
of the en dash does not extend to between", to rule out its use in
"US–Canadian relations".

In these two uses, en dashes normally do not have spaces around them.
An exception is made when avoiding spaces may cause confusion or look
odd. For example, compare "12 June – 3 July" with "12 June–3
July".

Like em dashes, en dashes can be used instead of colons or pairs of
commas that mark off a nested clause or phrase. They can also be used
around parenthetical expressions – such as this one – in place of
the em dashes preferred by some publishers, particularly where short
columns are used, since em dashes can look awkward at the end of a
line. (See
En dash versus em dash below.) In these situations, en
dashes must have a single space on each side.

Itemization Mark

Either the en dash or the em dash may be used as a bullet at the
start of each item in a bulleted list. (This is a matter of graphic
design rather than orthography .)

TYPOGRAPHY

Spacing

In most uses of en dashes, such as when used in indicating ranges,
they are closed up to the joined words. It is only when en dashes take
the role of em dashes – for example, in setting off parenthetical
statements such as this one – that they take spaces around them.
For more on the choice of em versus en in this context, see En dash
versus em dash .

Encoding And Substitution

When an en dash is unavailable in a particular character encoding
environment—as in the
ASCIIASCII character set—there are some
conventional substitutions. Often two hyphens are the substitute.

In Unicode, the en dash is U+2013 (decimal 8211). In HTML, one may
use the numeric forms - or ; there is also the
HTMLHTML entity -.

The en dash is sometimes used as a substitute for the minus sign ,
when the minus sign character is not available, since the en dash is
usually the same width as a plus sign. For example, the original 8-bit
Macintosh character set had an en dash, useful for the minus sign,
years before
UnicodeUnicode with a dedicated minus sign was available. The
hyphen-minus is usually too narrow to make a typographically
acceptable minus sign. However, the en dash cannot be used for a minus
sign in programming languages because the syntax usually requires a
hyphen-minus.

EM DASH

It has been suggested that this section be SPLIT into a new
article titled
Em dashEm dash . (Discuss ) (October 2017)

The EM DASH, M DASH, M-RULE, or "MUTTON" (—) is longer than an en
dash . The character is called an em dash because it is one em wide, a
length that varies depending on the font size.
OneOne em is the same
length as the font's height (which is typically measured in points ).
So in 9-point type, an em dash is 9 points wide, while in 24-point
type the em dash is 24 points wide. By comparison, the en dash, with
its 1-en width, is in most fonts either a half-em wide or the width
of an "n".

USAGE

The em dash is used in several ways: primarily in places where a set
of parentheses or a colon might otherwise be used, it can show an
abrupt change in thought or be used where a full stop (period) is too
strong and a comma too weak. Em dashes are also used to set off
summaries or definitions. Common uses and definitions are cited below
with examples.

Colon-like Use

Simple Equivalence (or Near-equivalence) Of Colon And Em Dash

* Three alkali metals are the usual substituents: sodium, potassium,
and lithium.
* Three alkali metals are the usual substituents—sodium,
potassium, and lithium.

Inversion Of The Function Of A Colon

* These are the colors of the flag: red, white, and blue.
* Red, white, and blue—these are the colors of the flag.

* The food, which was delicious, reminded me of home.
* The food—which was delicious—reminded me of home.
* The food (which was delicious) reminded me of home.

Subtle Differences In Punctuation

It may indicate an interpolation stronger than that demarcated by
parentheses, as in the following from
Nicholson Baker 's The Mezzanine
. (The degree of difference is subjective.)

* "At that age I once stabbed my best friend, Fred, with a pair of
pinking shears in the base of the neck, enraged because he had been
given the comprehensive sixty-four-crayon Crayola box—including the
gold and silver crayons—and would not let me look closely at the box
to see how Crayola had stabilized the built-in crayon sharpener under
the tiers of crayons."

* He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom,
Deirdre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees. He
was the miracle ingredient Z-147. He was—
"Crazy!" Clevinger interrupted, shrieking. "That's what you are!
Crazy!"
"—immense. I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted
humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman."

Self-interruption

* Simple revision of a statement as one's thoughts evolve on the fly:

* "I believe I shall—no, I'm going to do it."

* Contemplative or emotional trailing off (usually in dialogue or in
first person narrative ):

Either an ellipsis or an em dash can indicate aposiopesis , the
rhetorical device by which a sentence is stopped short not because of
interruption, but because the speaker is too emotional or pensive to
continue. Because the ellipsis is the more common choice, an em dash
for this purpose may be ambiguous in expository text, as many readers
would assume interruption, although it may be used to indicate great
emotion in dramatic monologue .

* Long pause:

* In Middle Modern English texts and afterward, em dashes have been
used to add long pauses (as noted by Joseph Robertson's 1785 An Essay
On Punctuation):

Lord Cardinal! if thou think'st on heaven's bliss,
Hold up thy hand, make signal of that hope.—
He dies, and makes no sigh! — Shakespeare , from Henry VI, Part 2

Quotation

Quotation Mark–like Use

This is a quotation dash . It may be distinct from an em dash in its
coding (see
Horizontal barHorizontal bar ). It may be used to indicate turns in a
dialog, in which case each dash starts a paragraph. It replaces other
quotation marks, and was preferred by authors such as
James JoyceJames Joyce :
―Oh saints above! Miss Douce said, sighed above her jumping rose. I
wished I hadn't laughed so much. I feel all wet ―Oh Miss Douce! Miss
Kennedy protested. You horrid thing!

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!" —
Lewis CarrollLewis Carroll

Redaction

An em dash may be used to indicate omitted letters in a word redacted
to an initial or single letter or to fillet a word, by leaving the
start and end letters whilst replacing the middle letters with a dash
or dashes (for the purposes of censorship or simply data anonymization
). In this use, it is sometimes doubled.

* It was alleged that D—— had been threatened with blackmail.

Three em dashes might be used to indicate a completely missing word.

Itemization Mark

Either the en dash or the em dash may be used as a bullet at the
start of each item in a bulleted list, but a plain hyphen is more
commonly used (and even mandatory in formats like
Markdown ).

Repetition

Three em dashes can be used in a footnote, endnote, or bibliography
to indicate repetition of the same author, like
Ibid.Ibid.

TYPOGRAPHIC DETAILS

Spacing And Substitution

According to most American sources (such as The Chicago Manual of
Style) and some British sources (such as
The Oxford Guide to Style ),
an em dash should always be set closed, meaning it should not be
surrounded by spaces. But the practice in some parts of the
English-speaking world, including the style recommended by The New
York Times Manual of Style and Usage for printed newspapers and the AP
Stylebook , sets it open, separating it from its surrounding words by
using spaces or hair spaces (U+200A) when it is being used
parenthetically. The
AP StylebookAP Stylebook rejects the use of the open em
dash to set off introductory items in lists. Some writers, finding the
em dash unappealingly long, prefer to use an open-set en dash. This
"space, en dash, space" sequence is also the predominant style in
German and French typography . (See
En dash versus em dash below.)

On a practical note, when the em dash is set closed (not surrounded
by spaces), it makes highlighting in ebooks difficult, as two words
are often treated as conjoined.

In Canada, The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing, The
Oxford Canadian A to Z of Grammar, Spelling "> These comparisons of
the hyphen (-), en dash (–), and em dash (—), in various 12-point
fonts, illustrate the typical relationship between lengths ("- n – m
—"). In some fonts, the en dash is not much longer than the hyphen,
and in
Lucida Grande , the en dash is actually shorter than the
hyphen.

The en dash is wider than the hyphen but not as wide as the em dash.
An em width is defined as the point size of the currently used font,
since the M character is not always the width of the point size. In
running text, various dash conventions are employed: an em dash—like
so—or a spaced em dash — like so — or a spaced en dash – like
so – can be seen in contemporary publications.

Various style guides and national varieties of languages prescribe
different guidance on dashes. Dashes have been cited as being treated
differently in the US and the UK, with the former preferring the use
of an em-dash with no additional spacing and the latter preferring a
spaced en dash. As examples of the US style, The Chicago Manual of
Style and The Publication Manual of the American Psychological
Association recommend unspaced em dashes. Style guides outside the US
are more variable. For example,
The Elements of Typographic Style by
Canadian typographer
Robert Bringhurst recommends the spaced en dash
– like so – and argues that the length and visual magnitude of an
em dash "belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian
typography." In the United Kingdom, the spaced en dash is the house
style for certain major publishers, including the
Penguin GroupPenguin Group , the
Cambridge University PressCambridge University Press , and
RoutledgeRoutledge . However, this convention
is not universal.
The Oxford Guide to Style (2002, section 5.10.10)
acknowledges that the spaced en dash is used by "other British
publishers" but states that the
Oxford University PressOxford University Press , like "most
US publishers", uses the unspaced em dash.

The en dash – always with spaces in running text when, as discussed
in this section, indicating a parenthesis or pause – and the spaced
em dash both have a certain technical advantage over the unspaced em
dash. Most typesetting and word processing expects word spacing to
vary to support full justification . Alone among punctuation that
marks pauses or logical relations in text, the unspaced em dash
disables this for the words it falls between. This can cause uneven
spacing in the text, but can be mitigated by the use of thin spaces ,
hair spaces , or even zero-width spaces on the sides of the em dash.
This provides the appearance of an unspaced em dash, but allows the
words and dashes to break between lines. The spaced em dash risks
introducing excessive separation of words. In full justification, the
adjacent spaces may be stretched, and the separation of words further
exaggerated. En dashes may also be preferred to em dashes when text is
set in narrow columns, such as in newspapers and similar publications,
since the en dash is smaller. In such cases, its use is based purely
on space considerations and is not necessarily related to other
typographical concerns.

On the other hand, a spaced en dash may be ambiguous when it is also
used for ranges, for example, in dates or between geographical
locations with internal spaces.

U+ 2015 ― HORIZONTAL BAR, also known as a QUOTATION DASH, is used
to introduce quoted text. This is the standard method of printing
dialogue in some languages. The em dash is equally suitable if the
quotation dash is unavailable or is contrary to the house style being
used.

There is no support in the standard
TeX fonts, but one can use
hbox{---}kern-.5em--- instead, or just use an em dash.

U+ 2053 ⁓ SWUNG DASH resembles a lengthened tilde , and is used to
separate alternatives or approximates. In dictionaries , it is
frequently used to stand in for the term being defined. A dictionary
entry providing an example for the term henceforth might employ the
swung dash as follows: henceforth (adv.) from this time forth; from
now on; "⁓ she will be known as Mrs. Wales"

There are several similar, related characters:

* U+007E ~ TILDE (see below)
* U+02DC ˜ SMALL TILDE (see below)
* U+223C ∼
TildeTilde operator, used in mathematics. Ends not curved as
much regular tilde. In
TeX and La
TeX , this character can be expressed
using the math mode command $sim$.
* U+301C 〜 Wave dash, used in East Asian typography for a variety
of purposes, including
Japanese punctuation .
* U+FF5E ～ Fullwidth tilde is a compatibility character for a wide
tilde used in East Asian typography.

SIMILAR UNICODE CHARACTERS

SAMPLE
Repeated
(five times) UNICODE
UNICODE NAME
REMARK

-
-----
U+002D
hyphen-minus
The standard
ASCIIASCII hyphen. Sometimes this is used in groups to
indicate different types of dash.
In programming languages , it is the character usually used to denote
operators like the subtraction or the negative sign .

_
_____
U+005F
low line
A spacing character usually showing a horizontal line below the
baseline (i.e. a spacing underscore). It is commonly used within URLs
and identifiers in programming languages, where a space-like
separation between parts is desired but a real space is not
appropriate. As usual for
ASCIIASCII characters, this character shows a
considerable range of glyphic variation ; therefore, whether sequences
of this character connect depends on the font used.

~
~~~~~
U+007E
tilde
Used in programming languages (e.g. for the bitwise NOT operator in C
and C++ ).
Its glyphic representation varies, therefore for punctuation in
running text the use of more specific characters is preferred, see
above .

U+00AD
soft hyphen
Used to indicate where a line may break, as in a compound word or
between syllables.

¯
¯¯¯¯¯
U+00AF
macron
A horizontal line positioned at cap height usually having the same
length as U+005F _ low line. It is a spacing character, related to the
diacritic mark "macron ". A sequence of such characters is not
expected to connect, unlike U+203E ‾ overline.

˗
˗˗˗˗˗
U+02D7
modifier letter minus sign
A variant of the minus sign used in phonetics to mark a retracted
or backed articulation. It may show small end-serifs .

˜
˜˜˜˜˜
U+02DC
small tilde
A spacing clone of tilde diacritic mark .

‐
‐‐‐‐‐
U+2010
hyphen
The character that can be used to unambiguously represent a hyphen.

‑
‑‑‑‑‑
U+2011
non-breaking hyphen
Also called "hard hyphen", denotes a hyphen after which no word
wrapping may apply. This is the case where the hyphen is part of a
trigraph or tetragraph denoting a specific sound (like in the Swiss
placename "
S-chanf "), or where specific orthographic rules prevent a
line break (like in German compounds of single-letter abbreviations
and full nouns, as "E-Mail").

‒
‒‒‒‒‒
U+2012
figure dash
Similar to an en-dash, but with the same advance width as lining
figures. The vertical position may also be centred on the zero digit,
and thus higher than the en-dash and em-dash, which are designed for
use with lowercase text in a vertical position similar to the hyphen.

‾
‾‾‾‾‾
U+203E
overline
A character similar to U+00AF ¯ macron, but a sequence of such
characters usually connects.

⁃
⁃⁃⁃⁃⁃
U+2043
hyphen bullet
A short horizontal line used as a list bullet .

⁻
⁻⁻⁻⁻⁻
U+207B
superscript minus
Usually is used together with superscripted numbers.

₋
₋₋₋₋₋
U+208B
subscript minus
Usually is used together with subscripted numbers.

* U+058A ֊ Armenian hyphen
* U+05BE ־ Hebrew maqaf
* U+1400 ᐀
Canadian syllabics hyphen
* U+1428 ᐨ
Canadian syllabics final short horizontal stroke
* U+1806 ᠆ MONGOLIAN TODO SOFT HYPHEN is a hyphen from the
Mongolian Todo alphabet .
* U+1B78 ᭸ Balinese musical symbol left-hand open pang
* U+2E0F ⸏ paragraphos is an
Ancient GreekAncient Greek textual symbol, usually
displayed by a long low line.
* U+2E17 ⸗ DOUBLE OBLIQUE HYPHEN is used in ancient Near-Eastern
linguistics.
* U+2E1A ⸚ HYPHEN WITH DIAERESIS is used mostly in German
dictionaries and indicates umlaut of the stem vowel of a plural form.
* U+2E40 ⹀ DOUBLE HYPHEN is used in the transcription of old
German manuscripts.
* U+30A0 ゠ KATAKANA-HIRAGANA DOUBLE HYPHEN
* U+3161 ㅡ HANGUL LETTER EU or U+1173 ᅳ HANGUL JUNGSEONG EU are
HangulHangul letters used in Korean to denote the sound .
* U+301C 〜 WAVE DASH and U+3030 〰 wavy dash are wavy lines found
in some East Asian character sets . Typographically, they have the
width of one
CJK character cell (fullwidth form ), and follow the
direction of the text, being horizontal for horizontal text, and
vertical for columnar. They are used as dashes, and occasionally as
emphatic variants of the katakana vowel extender mark.
* U+30FC ー KATAKANA-HIRAGANA PROLONGED SOUND MARK , the Japanese
chōonpu , is used in Japanese to indicate a long vowel.
* U+4E00 一
CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-4E00, the Chinese character for
"one ", is used in various East Asian languages.
* U+A4FE ꓾ Lisu punctuation comma looks like a sequence of a
hyphen and a full stop .
* U+FE31 ︱ PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL EM DASH is a
compatibility character for a vertical em dash used in East Asian
typography.
* U+FE32 ︲ PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL EN DASH is a
compatibility character for a vertical en dash used in East Asian
typography.
* U+FE58 ﹘ SMALL EM DASH is a compatibility character for a small
em dash used in East Asian typography.
* U+FF5E ～ Fullwidth tilde is a compatibility character for a wide
tilde used in East Asian typography.
* U+FE63 ﹣ SMALL HYPHEN-MINUS is a compatibility character for a
small hyphen-minus used in East Asian typography.
* U+FF0D － FULLWIDTH HYPHEN-MINUS is a compatibility character for
a wide hyphen-minus used in East Asian typography.
* U+10110 𐄐 Aegean number ten
* U+1104B 𑁋
BrahmiBrahmi punctuation line
* U+11052 𑁒
BrahmiBrahmi number one
* U+110BE 𑂾
KaithiKaithi section mark
* U+1D360 𝍠
Counting rod unit digit one

IN OTHER LANGUAGES

In many languages, such as Polish , the em dash is used as an opening
quotation mark . There is no matching closing quotation mark;
typically a new paragraph will be started, introduced by a dash, for
each turn in the dialog.

Corpus studies indicate that em dashes are more commonly used in
Russian than in English. In Russian, the em dash is used for the
present copula (meaning "am"/"is"/"are"), which is unpronounced in
spoken Russian.

In French , em or en dashes can be used as parentheses (brackets),
but the use of a second dash as a closing parenthesis is optional.
When a closing dash is not used the sentence is ended with a period
(full-stop) as usual. Dashes are, however, much less common than
parentheses.

In Spanish , em dashes can be used to mark off parenthetical phrases.
Unlike in English, the em dashes are spaced like brackets, i.e., there
is a space between main sentence and dash, but not between
parenthetical phrase and dash.

Una bandada de gorriones —algunos de ellos jóvenes— se posó y
cantó.

RENDERING DASHES ON COMPUTERS

Typewriters and early computers have traditionally had only a limited
character set, often having no key that produces a dash. In
consequence, it became common to substitute the nearest available
punctuation mark or symbol. Em dashes are often represented in British
usage by a single hyphen-minus surrounded by spaces, or in American
usage by two hyphen-minuses surrounded by spaces.

Modern computer software typically has support for many more
characters and is usually capable of rendering both the en and em
dashes correctly—albeit sometimes with an inconvenient input method.
Some software, though, may operate in a more limited mode. Some text
editors, for example, are restricted to working with a single 8-bit
character encoding , and when unencodable characters are entered—for
example by pasting from the clipboard—they are often blindly
converted to question marks. Sometimes this happens to em and en
dashes, even when the 8-bit encoding supports them or when an
alternative representation using hyphen-minuses is an option.

Any kind of dash can be used directly in an
HTMLHTML document, but HTML
also lets them be entered using character references. The em dash and
the en dash are special in that they can be written using character
entity references as -- and -, respectively.

* In
GNUGNU /
LinuxLinux , (
GTK+GTK+ applications only), there are various
methods of producing these dashes. For em dashes, one may use the
compose key followed by three presses of the hyphen character. For en
dashes, one may press the compose key followed by two hyphens and a
period. For all dashes, ⇧ Shift+ctrl+u produces a u; then one may
enter the
UnicodeUnicode number (e.g. 2015) for the appropriate dash and
press enter or the space bar. Also, other keys may be remapped to
create dashes.
* In the
X Window SystemX Window System , the em dash may be entered by pressing
the compose key and three hyphens.
* For the en dash, La
TeX has the macro (textendash).
* In macOS using the Australian, British, Canadian, French, German,
Irish, Irish Extended, Italian, Pro Italian, Russian, US, US Extended,
or Welsh keyboard layout, an en dash can be obtained by typing ⌥
Opt+-, while an em dash can be typed with ⌥ Opt+⇧ Shift+-.
* In
TeX , an em dash (—) is typed as three hyphen‐minuses (---)
and an en dash (–) as two hyphen‐minuses (--). Mathematical minus
(−) is signified as $-$ or (-).
* On Plan 9 systems, an en or em dash may be entered by pressing the
Compose keyCompose key (usually left Alt), followed by typing en or em
respectively.
* In
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows running on a computer whose keyboard includes
a numeric keypad , an en or em dash may be typed into most text areas
by using their respective
Alt code by holding down the
Alt keyAlt key and
pressing either Alt+0150 for the en dash or Alt+0151 for the em dash.
The numbers must be typed on the numeric keypad with
Num LockNum Lock enabled.
In addition, the Character Map utility included with MS Windows can be
used to copy and paste en and em dash characters into most
applications.
* In
Microsoft WordMicrosoft Word running on a computer whose keyboard has a
numeric keypad, an em dash can be typed with Ctrl+Alt+- (on the
numeric keypad, with the numeric hyphen usually in the top-right
corner), and an en dash can be typed with Ctrl+-. This does not work
with the hyphen key on the main keyboard (between "0" and "=" with a
US or UK layout), which has completely different functions. With
MicrosoftMicrosoft Word's default settings, in both Windows and Macintosh
versions, an em dash symbol, which is not always a true em dash from
the font, is automatically produced by
Autocorrect when two unspaced
hyphens are entered between words (as in "word--word"). An en dash,
which again, is not always a true en dash from the font, is
automatically produced when one or two hyphens surrounded by spaces
are entered: ("word - word") or ("word -- word"). This feature can be
disabled by customizing Autocorrect.

To determine if the true en or em dash from the font are being used
rather than a cross-referenced character from the Symbol font, one can
copy and paste a sample of the dash into Word or
WordPad followed by
Alt+X. The hexadecimal
UnicodeUnicode number will appear, revealing whether
the character is a true en or em dash (
UnicodeUnicode 2013 or 2014). Using
the true dash is important if one needs to share documents with other
users in other applications or operating systems. The true em and en
dash along with other dashes, spaces, and special characters, such as
the true minus sign, can be inserted through the Insert menu without
use of the numeric keypad, which is not provided in some keyboard
layouts. These symbols can also be assigned keyboard shortcuts through
this menu.

* ^ A B Windows character codes must be typed using the numeric
keypad with
Num LockNum Lock on.
* ^ A B Other style differences (e.g., APA "p.m." and "pp." vs. AMA
"PM" and "pp") are ignored for the purpose of this comparison.